This week has been such a joy and blessing in so many ways. Things are going really well. The children are growing and are such a delight to have. Both of them are extremely happy children, laughing and smiling ALL THE TIME, and we are truly blessed to share our lives with them. They are learning new things each day. This week I've had some time to sit around and read, quilt, and work on other projects. And Thomas and I have been spending quality time together each night.
These last few days have been wonderful. S. has been especially funny, interesting, and more obedient (yeah!). I switched how I was managing his behaviors about 2 weeks ago, plus I'm home more, and I think those two things combined are really helping the situation. On top of that he has been in speech therapy twice a week for more than a month now, and his teachers are also reinforcing sign language at school. He is trying to repeat us more each day, he is talking more (up to 9 words), and he is signing more. He still has a long way to go verbally, but there has been marked improvement in just the last few days. It's so interesting how well he can communicate without speaking. Oh, and he is growing. I swear it looks like the child sprouted legs overnight.
I feel like things are really starting to work perfectly ... and we got the phone call that his grandmother has been officially approved and she can come get him. OK. We knew this was coming, and we know it will be good for him to be with family. And she is more than capable of raising him. But we are going to miss him dearly. A larger part of us just wants her to show up tomorrow and have this done with because it is too dreadful to drag out. However, he has a hernia on his stomach and the caseworker will not let him leave until we have a surgeon evaluate it and fix it if need be. That on top with pending vacation plans, equals probably one more month with our beloved S. It will be sometime in July that he leaves and it is going to be hard.
I have to share a story with you. I just about fell off the sofa laughing at S. this week. He brought me a book, not just any book, but Thomas' political science journal, for me to read to him. (I'm sure Thomas is glad to know we seem to be raising a child prodigy) Well, he opened it up and there was a full-page black and white photo of a man wearing a hat and smoking a cigar. My first thought - "good heavens there are still ads with people smoking in them ... its a good thing he doesn't see this on a normal basis." So I TRY to emphasize the hat. Look, I say, he has a hat on his head. Well, S. was more interested in the cigar. He was pointing at it with this real confused look on his face and I could tell he wanted to know what it was. So I said, that is a cigar. And he pointed again, and looked at it strangely. And then .... he looked and me and signed "dirty." Oh yes, that
is dirty, I said. I can't tell you how happy I was to see him tell me the cigar was dirty. I can only imagine that he probably thought it looked like the guy had poop in his mouth or something of the sort. Oh, I fell out laughing. I still can't stop.
Other good things happened this week. We took the children to the beach for the first time! Yeah. One of my coworkers has a beach house at St. Teresa, its a little over an hour away. The picture up above was taken on the golf cart riding to the beach. S. loved the ocean. He crawled around on his hands and knees, walked, fell in it, and did not want Thomas to hold him in the water. P. sat some in the sand and played as much as she can, and then sat with me in the chair and watched. Here are some photos.
I also had the chance to sew quite a bit this week. One night, I made this cute little bag for P. Basically, we needed a smaller bag to use for daycare because our regular diaper bag was too big for the few things we take for her each day.
I'm sure I had a lot more I wanted to say, but I can't remember right now. So there is always tomorrow. Be sure to check back.
